Development Strategy: Rule of Law

There has been a long debate about which is the best development strategy for a Third world state. My answer is: rule of law. But only a minority of people on Earth live under these blessed rules of government. Instead we find autocracy or rule by law. Autocracy as with military rule is arbitrary and leads to looting. Rule by law is predictable but allows for government to regulate society completely.


Justice
The great Roman lawyers defined justice as correct behavior (speak the truth, honour contracts), not harming anyone and give to each and everyone what is due to them (the cardinal problem of justice persisting to this day).
These principles did not prevent Corpus Juris Civilis from endorsing slavery, with 50 percent of the Empire population being subjugated, while the Jews constituted another large oppressed group but more seldom as slaves.
Roman law did not know rule of law, although the republic was much institutionalized. The Roman Empire under the Principate degraded into "occidental despotism".
Constitutional law surged in the feudal society with representative bodies and councils, as Hintze pointed out against Weber, but only in Western Europe where political representation outlived feudalism. Slavery was undone successively, replaced by serfdom in Eastern Europe. The Vikings had "traelar".
Administrative law followed the modern state as its core was bureaucracy. Towards the 18 th century we arrive at two chief interpretations of rule of law.

Common Law-Locke
The Second Treatise of Government outlines the first ever principal-agent approach to government, restraining it by means of the sanctity of private property, individual rights, representation and the balance of powers. Locke brought the Calvinist effort at constitutionalism to completion from a Socinian basis, to be carried on by Madison's Machivellism.

Kant and Franco-German Law
Kant looked for an answer to the question of law and freedom-Rousseau's problem. Having no principal-agent framework, he suggested his metaphysical moral theory as the foundation of law. His conception of constitutional monarchy was limited indeed.

WJP
Although one may be sceptic to the claims WJP makes for the social benefits of rule of law, one can still employ their measures to draw a global map. Starting from the opaque nature of the meaning of "rule of law", the WJP considers the following manifest variables relevant:

1) Restraints on government
This criterion is vague. It sounds like separation of powers or judicial review. The opposite is dictatorship in some form.

2) Absence of corruption
Here we have a variable that relies much upon expert opinion. Corruption comes in several forms, which are difficult to measure. On the one hand, there is petty corruption in ill-ordered societies that www.scholink.org/ojs/index.php/asir

3) Open society
This is easier to establish, as open against closed society is a dichotomy.

4) Fundamental rights
A list of immunities often accompanies a written constitution. The crux of the matter is whether these rights or privileges are enforced fully or partially. This depends on the justice system in a country. Only common law or civil law legal traditions admits this possibility, not Koranic law or socialist law traditions.

5) Order and security
WJP here turns to variables that are conditions for or consequences of criteria 1) -4). Under 5) we have how the state protects private property, against theft or expropriation.

6) Regulatory enforcement
This variable 6) is close to 2) corruption, although there may be other causes of regulatory failure like anarchy.

7) Civil justice
The criterion here is the capacity of ordinary citizen to make their voices heard legally.

8) Criminal justice
Again this is more of the background of rule of law, namely the efficiency of the legal machinery as a whole.
Moreover, WJT has a ninth variable-informal justice. It taps how customary law operates.
Scores on each manifest variable between 0 and 1 are obtained by means of a questionnaire to laymen and experts.
It seems that the first 4 variables indicate what we mean by "rule of law". The others refer more to the functioning of the legal system in general. In dictatorships like the Gulf states, there is not much rule of law but the legal system is not broken.

Factor Analysis
Factor Analysis is, one may mention, a data analysis technique aimed at finding underlying dimensions in an observed data set. One identifies combinations of variables which are shared by a set of properties,  The finding is that we have two latent variables of equal strength, and together they account for almost 90 % of the variation.

DIMENSION 1
The first dimension comprises corruption, law enforcement and civil and criminal justice. Is that rule of law? Could a country score high on these properties but not so high on dimension 2?

Law and Order
The following countries score high on this measure: Singapore, UAE and Hungary. But these countries have hardly rule of law states.

Judicial enforcement
Here again we find Singapore and the UAE besides South Korea, Czech Republic. However, these states are not well-known for high rule of law. It appears that dimension 1 is more measuring political stability than rule of law.

DIMENSION 2
The items loading on this variable 2 comprise government constraints and fundamental rights. The countries that score high do not include Singapore or Eastern Europe. Instead it is Western Europe, North America and Oceania. The WJ index adds the scores on the 8 elements of rule of law into one total score. I believe factor 2 should be given more weight than factor 1 in such a summary index.
The prominent place given to Singapore and Hong Kong as well as the UAE seem more to reflect dimension 1, although Hong Kong autonomy is only history.

Top Rule of Law
One may be interested in looking into which countries score high on the second dimension, i.e.,

government constraints, fundamental rights and open government. The Scandinavian countries and
Finland stand out particularly. Noteworthy is that Germany ranks higher than France. The US is even lower than France. As a matter of fact, the US is scored beneath Uruguay, which sounds awkward.
Likewise the score of the UK is astonishingly low compared with other democracies-beneath Estonia.

Legal Efficiency and Rule Law
It seems that the WJP contains 2 distinct dimensions of the state: efficiency of the legal machinery on the one hand and government constraints on the other. One sees this in the different scores for India and China. Rule by law is typical of China, whereas India has more of rule of law. Rule by law is a necessary condition for rule of law, but the opposite does not hold.

Why the Nordic Countries Come on Top?
Here we have a fascinating problem of explanation. Is it a matter of culture or institutions? Perhaps rule of law is path dependent meaning we have to examine historical developments?
The Scandinavian countries came out of the Great War as constitutional monarchies with parliamentary.
By allowing for unlimited right to vote for men and women, the path to constitutional democracy was easily secured. Finland followed a different path, presidential democracy after a civil war between "reds" and victorious "whites".
It may be added that from an historical point of view absolute monarchy did not last for any longer periods of time (Denmark longer than Sweden and Norway). Since the medieval times there were representative institutions for the estates of the realm (Riksdag) as well as general support and respect for the so-called Law, early codified. We find rules similar to the Magna Charta in Kings' Oaths.
A possible strong institution against infractions law infractions is the Ombudsman Office, either as the Swedish model or the Danish model, to which ordinary people can complain over abuse by the authorities of the law.

Rule of Law Countries
Many people around the globe want rights and security under the law. More than 50 percent of the countries of the world have states that do not respect the precepts of rule of law. The concept of rule of law is somewhat ambitious in WJP. It stands for legal integrity (Kant) or rights and representation www.scholink.org/ojs/index.php/asir Applied Science and Innovative Research Vol. 5, No. 2, 2021 48 Published by SCHOLINK INC. (Locke).
Globally, what stands out in these comparative scores is the following: 1) "Norden" scores exceptionally high; 2) The UK and the US have lower than expected rankings in the top.
Many countries have been left out, not only poorer countries. Thus, Switzerland is missing as well as Iceland. There is no evidence showing that countries with constitutional review or federalism score top.

Development
Developing countries should move from aurocracy or rule by law to rule of law. This is the best development strategy. When rights are secured, then wealth will come.
Development theory has vacillated between capitalism and socialism. However, socio-economic development will come when a country moves from autocracy to rule of law and then further to rule of law

Conclusion
A majorly of world population lives under political conditions that do not promote development. In many countries there is autocracy or rule by law. History of mankind is replete with warring autocracies or oppressive rule by law regimes squeezing societal surplus out of the population. Rule of law is the end of political development.
Autocracy when surviving will resort to rule by law for the purpose of minimizing transaction costs.
Military rule is unpredictable due to its temporary nature. Rule of law knows lots of institutional variation. Its core is though the constraints upon government.